OK, Old West Historians, see if you can read this entire piece without your lips getting tired. Seriously, it is a bit long, but provides more examples of how the old time lawmen dispensed "justice" without the help of judge and jury. This Tumlinson was one of a long line of Tumlinsons who played a role in early Texas history.
Hamp
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WASHINGTON POST
March 5, 1893 Page 18 Column 3
CAREER OF A MAN-KILLER
The Loves, Hates, and Tragedies of a Sheriff in Texas
SUICIDE HIS LIFE'S CLIMAX
How His Revolver Solved to His Own Satisfaction a Social and Matrimonial Question that Has Agitated Ages, Climes, and Nations-Fighting for Life and of Taking Life.
With wife murder preceding his passing, With self-murder as his own letter of credit to the beyond, near the little cactus circled town of Cotulla, in the Rio Grande country on the 30th day of January, 1893, died Joseph W. Tumlinson of LaSalle County (Texas). The weapon was the reliable single-action Colt's revolver of 45 caliber, and of such is the kingdom of the borderland.
Tumlinson was more than 50 years old, and the double crime inspired by jealousy. He was an instance of preserved vitality, due to a life spent far from the temptations and consequent dissipations of a city. Imagine such a man who has passed forty killing himself because of his wife's infidelity. The thing could not happen. He would stoically accept the inevitable. Shrug his shoulders, enter and leave the divorce court with as little noise as possible and pay the alimony as a mater of course. His actions would be the legitimate result of a latter day civilization, whereby all the natural instinct of the male to possess, solely, his female is sandpapered and almost obliterated. Tumlinson had not been brought within the philosophical and emasculating influences of the city life. His days were spent on the prairies. His food was simple and his pleasures few. He had suffered no diminution of vigor. So when his wife disgraced him he shot her and then himself. He left no worldly letter to tell why the deed was done. In the belief that those who knew him would know why it was done he made no explanation. Two corpses, with a hole in the bosom of one and a hole in the forehead of the other, lying in a little path that led to the boundless commons of the village, were a sufficient statement. They were put into a wagon and hauled back to the town. The soaked blood upon them was washed away and the particles of sand which clung to the woman's hair were brushed aside by unsympathetic fingers. As her lips were slightly drawn over the teeth and there was a sudden fright and horror upon her face, what need for comment? She had done only as her sisters had done, and a justice that was merciful in its swiftness supplanted the long agony of the public trial and the presence of reported who wished her to "make a statement". The man was satisfied. He had lived his life and avenged himself at the end, and he went before the final judge with little care as to what might be the ruling upon his cause. He had been use to taking human life, and his wife's life and his own were of little moment. It was very quickly done and the rest was silence.
What passed between them upon that afternoon stroll when the level rays of the sinking sun lighted the tops of the mesquite trees and all around them was solitude, will never be known. It was probably a steady accusations spoken in a repressed voice of a man on fire with anger, broken, shame-faced denials in answer and then the pistol's work.
Tumlinson was well known to the residents of the Mexican Border. At one time or another they had been brought into contact with him and had cause to respect him as well as fear him. Mr. Edward Burleson, who is a district attorney down in that section, has come east to see the inaugural. He was talking of the dead man in the lobby of the Arlington last night. His name and his tragic end had come up naturally in a discussion of the curious people who inhabit a section of which every one is a law unto him.
"It has been asserted", he said, "that every man who kills himself is crazy, that for some kink in his brain he would live on. It was certainly not the case with Tumlinson. His crime was deliberately planned and cleanly executed. He was not the sort of being to go crazy----the slaughter of his wife and himself struck him as the best way out of an awkward situation, and I do not know that he was wrong. You will understand that in a small country town there is always a great deal of talk about anything that is out of the ordinary. Old women whisper it when the young ones are around and the young ones giggle it among themselves. The man who has been deceived comes in for a great deal of covert commiseration. He sees many nudges of the elbow and sly winks. He can go away, or stay and live through it all or kill himself. Tumlinson preferred to be underground. Perhaps he took the best way out of it".
"He was in many respects a very remarkable man. His life had been spent in a very troubled section, and he was used to guarding it with a quick eye and steady nerve. He was very short of stature---not more than five feet six inches, and had a deliberateness of movement that gave no intimation of his dreadful quickness in times of emergency. He was a man-killer, I think, because it was born in him. In a measure, he was not responsible for it. Surrounded by any environment in any section of the globe, he would have been a slayer of his fellow beings. In a section where the six-shooter and the Winchester are as common as the knife and fork he was blessed, of course with exceptional opportunities. Of very quiet demeanor, and speaking always in a low pleasant semi-whisper, with manners as gentle as a woman's and a frank smile, he was by far the most dangerous man I have met--more dangerous than the celebrated Ben Thompson, of Austin, because he was a quicker and better shot, and did not use intoxicants in any form; more dangerous than Billy, the Kid, because he was not a highwayman, cared little for display, and nothing at all for women in a general way".
"He had caution with his savagery and age did not rob him of his skill in any degree. The fact that he lived more the six (five) decades, left behind him a record for desperate courage and execution that few men have approached, and finally died by his own hand are proofs enough of it. I do not think that he was ever wounded or even grazed by a bullet".
"A statement of his victims challenges belief, and yet they are a matter of record. I suppose that the first and last Tumlinson was responsible for the deaths of close to half a hundred men. In a graveyard of a little town called Carrizo Springs he has six buried. At Cochina there are three, at Twohig are three, along Rena (Pena) Creek are five, and at Eagle Pass are two. That makes twenty-one whose demises are well known. The list is, of course, incomplete. I suppose that Tumlinson himself was the only man who could have given it in full, and he naturally fore bare to do so. Like most of his class he was silent upon the subject of his affrays. It was practically impossible to induce him to talk of them."
"I remember, that once, however, he said to me-and I adduce the remark merely as an evidence of how the professional man-killer feels-he said to me."
"I have drunk whisky in enormous quantities; and derived no pleasure from it. I have time and again staked my all upon the turn of a card, and walked out of the room a beggar; the sensation was scarcely strong enough to be called a sensation. I have found nothing that would drive the blood back upon my heart, only to rebound and hurry through my vans, save personal combat; for, hours before, I am alert and full of interest in everything around me. I feel surcharged with energy. When my life is wagered against the life of another and I feel that I have it in me to win, I am really alive, At other times I simply exist."
"The habit of killing," Mr. Burleson continued, "becomes as much a habit as that of drinking. A man becomes involved in a quarrel and slays his opponent. When the occasion arises he will afterwards find himself more ready to resort to extreme measures, and his second for-man is killed; then in a vast majority of instances comes the third, then the fourth; then the habit is fixed. Tumlinson was that kind of man. He weighed human life as not a feather's worth.
"Like most others of his ilk too, he was lucky. He seemed in fact to bear a charmed life. For some reason the other men could not hit him. He had been shot at hundreds of times. One night standing near the fireplace in the front room of his cottage three stockmen, with whom he was unfriendly, entered to kill him. It was nearly 12 o'clock. Tumlinson was in his nightgown and slippers. His weapons were in the adjoining room. His assailants, armed with revolvers, rushed in, got between him and the room where his arms were, and without a word began shooting. I suppose that they must have fired at least a dozen shots. He dived through them, rushed into the adjoining chamber, grabbed his revolver, and returned all in twenty seconds' time and killed the three of them. He was not scratched.
"Upon another occasion eight Mexican vaqueros attacked him during a round-up. He had been killing some of their relatives or friends. It was a winter day, and Tumlinson was clad in a long blue army overcoat, several sizes too large for him. It was buttoned all the way down the front, and naturally he could not reach his revolver. He was pulled from his horse and thrown to the ground. Machetes were hacking at him, and pistols apparently against his body were exploding. In the melee, incomprehensible as it may seem, his overcoat was peeled from him without unfastening of a single button. He was in the expressive vernacular of the West, "Shucked". How many shots the Mexicans wasted upon him I do not know. He was not harmed, and when the remainder fled they left three of their number stone dead.
"Tumlinson's success in affrays was due not only to his innate cool-headedness, but his God-given gift as a marksman. In this regard he was phenomenal. With the ordinary weapon of the day his performances in speed and accuracy fell little short of miraculous. Upon the cactus grows an oblong fruit of a bright crimson hue. It is little smaller than an egg, and against the dark green of the heavy prickly leaves makes an excellent target. I have seen him jerk a six-shooter from its scabbard with sudden motion, fire with no apparent aim, turn upon his heel, fire again, and continue until the weapon's chambers were empty. Thirty paces away would lie six pieces of the fruit as neatly clipped from their stems as though a gardener had used his pruning shears. This man in an affray was death personified.
"There was a curious contradiction in him for while he esteemed human life as nothing, no more hospitable being ever drew a breath. In fact he died very poor, and his poverty was brought upon him by feeding half the county. His latch-string was even upon the outside, and he was unhappy when less than half a dozen strangers sat at his table. He lent money to every one, and collected from no one. Not any of his numerous slayings had money for a basis. On his domestic relations he was rigidly correct. The wife who had nursed him in sickness and slaved for him in health, who had borne him children and been his faithful and loving helpmate, died three or four years ago, and he married a younger and more reckless woman, who brought on his death and her own."
